The use of delivery devices or introducers employing catheters has long been known for a variety of medical procedures, including procedures for establishing, re-establishing or maintaining passages, cavities or lumens in vessels, organs or ducts in human and veterinary patients, occlusion of such vessels, delivering medical treatments, and other interventions. For these procedures, it has also long been known to deliver an implantable medical device by means of a catheter, often intraluminally. For example, a stent, stent-graft, vena cava filter or occlusion device may be delivered intraluminally from the femoral artery for deployment.
For procedures in which a prosthesis or other medical device is implanted into a patient, the prosthesis to be implanted is normally held on a carrier catheter or cannula of the introducer in a compressed state and then released from the carrier catheter so as to expand to its normal operating state, prior to withdrawal of the catheter from the patient to leave the prosthesis in position. In many devices, the steps to carry out the implantation may occur, for example, first by retracting a retractable sheath to expand or partially expand the prosthesis, and then performing further steps to, for example, release one or both ends of the prosthesis, deploy an anchoring stent, or the like. In most cases, it is desirable that such deployment steps follow a specific order as instructed by the manufacturer of the device. For example, deployment of the proximal end may be performed in a slower and more controlled manner to ensure accurate deployment in a precise location, whereas it may be desirable to release and deploy the distal end of the prosthesis more quickly. Once the prosthesis has been properly and fully deployed within a patient, it may be desirable to cover a prosthesis release mechanism and/or the proximal tip of the delivery device before removing the delivery device from the vasculature. Thus, the delivery device described herein comprises a handle assembly that permits quick release of at least a portion of the prosthesis from the delivery device as well as re-sheathing of the prosthesis release mechanism and the tip of the delivery device for removal from a patient's body.